Yogic tip for today

In uttanasana, you can make an interesting discovery about your own balance: shift the weight to your heels, then shift it back to the toes (ball of the feet, in front). It can involved different sets of muscles altogether.

Yogic thought for the day

Sai, my husband, picked up this wonderful Rumi book the other day. It is illustrated with these fantastic Middle eastern paintings -- fabulous like:) I find the translation (by Philip Dunn, Manuela D. Mascetti, R. A Nicholson) a bit stilted and odd in the transition.. Yet, some lines are evocative, simply because with Rumi, you cannot go wrong:)

Here is one line:

Why did God make reality so shy?

Such a lyrical way of saying we have no clue of what is real...
I wish, I want, I yearn... Phew....Between the knowing and experiencing, one lifetime!

Daily Health Gyan

Aw, I am not a sugar buff. In fact, thanks to (if you can say that) jaundice as a toddler, I have a terrible appetite, hardly any craving or hunger unless my blood sugar dips, when I realise I may need to eat..
But somebody gifted me with a huge box of Sweet Bengal mithai, and heavens, they are delightful. Any way, now that the deprived (first time in my life eating Bengali sweets, so u can imagine. Thanks Abhishek!) phase is over I am back to thinking twice before tucking the sugar in.. Sugar causes what is called Advanced glycosylation End Products inside which prevent collagen from forming properly under the skin, making it look wrinkled, sagging it and rest of the dour stuff ... If you did not have jaundice like me, and suffer a sweet tooth, maybe this thought should keep you off sweets. For a while!

Yogic thought for the day

Every thought you send out is a vibration which never perishes. It goes on vibrating every particle of the universe, and if your thoughts are noble, forcible, they set in vibration every sympathetic mind. ... The result is that without knowledge of the consequences of your own work, you will be setting in motion great forces which will work together...
Swami Sivananda.

Answer and query

Answer: Yes. of course, it is the sirsasana, the king of poses.

Query: What is the main chakra activated in the headstand?

My article on rediff.com and attacks on me:)

-- one of the many, which appears twice monthly, on rediff.com. Here is the link

Don't miss the comments below, on faltu yogacharyas who are only out to make money:)
 So many frustrated yoga teachers out there, on a warparth against any body who truly loves yoga.. It is a puzzle to me how yoga `' lovers' (ha, ha)  become idiotically  possesive about yoga..

If I loved the sky and u loved it too, do you have more right over it?

Such a stupid mistaken sense of commitment people have towards things.. .. these comments are by far, the most harmless, .. but if you glance back at columns in rediff.com that I have done for a few years now, a whole lot of comments (which I have nowadays stopped reading, there is such a violent attack on me, being unattractive, looking haggard, looking old, being a Muslim, looking like a man,  being uninformed about yoga, being a pretender and other such things -- all these comments  written in a sloppy style also, which makes it worse:)

 It is intriguing to me, this attitude. I am not responding, so please don't start lecturing me about it (some people start that too, on this blog and think I am reacting to these things. If I did, would I by writing there still and for so many years?!!! ).

I am merely observing, objectively, the violence of their attack on me!!

 I love yoga, why is it bothering so many people?!!!

It is a puzzle!

Answer and query

Answer: My student Gayathree (it is you, right?) has given the answer and it is absolutely right:
Depending on the level of blockage, when the heart chakra is blocked, one tends to be cold, ruthless, self-centered,insecure, fearful, depressed, feeling disconnected with people , lacks compassion, performs selfish actions and simply do not care - for themselves or for others !


Query: Which is referred to as the king of asanas? Simple question:)

Yogic thought for the day

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From Osho:
Chesterton says angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

That is a nice thought. The biggest problem I have while teaching a tough pose is the militancy with which people approach it, trying to shut down an inner critical voice through their achievement. That is a subconscious pattern of being, and came about when you grew up, and had your parents trying to lift you up beyond the rut they had themselves fallen into . so yes, most of us carry that baggage of our parents inside us, and when we are on the mat, we succumb to that critical voice once more, trying and trying hard. To be really childlike on the mat, to laugh when u make a mistake, and move on.. and then, therefore land lightly in a fall... that is the place. That is yoga:)

Yogic tip for today

The shoulderstand is a good pose to use for anger control according to Iyengar, because it tranquilises the mind by flushing it with blood, tones the spinal nerves, and relieves tension from the neck and upper back.

Daily Health Gyan

Am browsing this book The Antibiotic Crisis, by Leon Chaitow .. He cites a research by St Thomas Hosp, London that 70 per cent of antibiotic use or prescriptions are actually unnecessary, Often, the information about the drugs come from the companies which manufacture, so the doctors are not as well informed..
Plus, overuse/misuse of antibiotics only creates resistance strains of bacteria, so that in a crisis, the antibiotic use actually fails...

Answer and query

ANSWER: When the heart chakra is out of sync, you tend to blame yourself for hurt from loved ones. You suffer major guilt. You may put yourself behind others, therefore exhibiting less love for yourself over others whom you wish to please. This can hurt you continuosly.

QUERY: What happens when heart chakra is blocked?

Daily Health Gyan

Ginger, garlic and cinnamon are anti-fungal (have them in some form, in your food). They prevent the accumulation of bad yeasts inside you which damage your intestinal lining (which is important in nutrient absorption). These bad yeasts also release bad stuff into your blood stream.

Yogic thought for the day

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I am browsing Osho's take on Patanjali's Sutras, and as usual, it is very engaging, down-to-earth, hilariously serious (oxymoron, but that is yoga:). So, in one of the Sutras, as amongst others, the rishi is talking of how the mind colours everything.
But a sustained yoga practice suddenly exposes u to the potential for relative truths in a single moment. For me, this is a fantasic vista.. Your mind can, suddenly, see the landscape of the moment from different dimensions.. and you understand that this can help you move to the future, stay in the present and deal with the past, with a certain wisdom -- and also that this wisdom has nothing to do with you, but is merely a gift that comes about because you have climbed the hill to a certain vantage point (due to your practice and nothing else) where you can see things more clearly, and therefore, have a choice that may be denied the rest. So, you remain humble, as the scene unfolds... somewhat like the quantum world and another reality from the experienced one. ..

So, yes, the mind colours everything and in yoga you understand the different shades and realise the reality is actaully different from that shades that drench it...

Here is Osho's little story, in his own words, to get this message across:)

The tramp happened to call at the home of a temperate man. "I want to aks you a question," said the man to the tramp. "Do you ever take alcoholic drinks?"
"Before I answer," said the tramp, "I want to know whether it is put as an inquiry or as an invitation."
It depends... the answer will depend on the question. The tramp is trying to be safe as to whether it is an invitation or an inquiry. His `yes, or `no' is going to be dependent on what it is. When you see a certain thing, you don't see the thing as such.

Yoga meal times and health

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Fasting... usually when u do yoga regularly, u eat only two proper meals a day. One in the morning, heaviest with all the stuff u want in -- vegetables, starch, protein etc. And the second one around 6.30 pm(up to 8.30 pm). When u train to become an instructor you become rather passionate about this regimen and it becomes part of your lifestyle. Anything that veers from this, feels `Uhh??!! ' And the fantastic thing about this is that you realise that two proper meals is all the body needs and in between these, u are feeling light, lithe and energetic.

People misunderstand continuously eating (promoted by some dieticians as a way to hike metabolism) as healthy, and that if they fill themselves with healthy food regularly, they are onto a win-win situation healthwise. Actually giving gaps for the tract, so that it can deal with the food u dumped with it, and allows it the time and strength  to clean up the debris of all that. The gaps, more than the food u pile on, help the gut. Think of it as a hardworking machine, think of the stomach as u yourself.. then, answer honestly the question if you would rather be working continuously; or would you be happier with appropriate rest breaks and feel more productive for that... Your gut is you, what you feel... only it does not know how to communicate it to you.. and tries by making you lethargic, heavy, stiff and dull when you overeat..

According to research, when you eat with wise gaps between meals, you allow other things to fall in place: --

• It has been found that the different actors in your immune health -- the T-cells, the neutrophils, the immunoglobulin levels (apart from a lot of others which will confuse u technically and the only reason I am not listing here) are boosted so you do NOT  fall sick!
• The removal of  debris from cellular activity and cleansing that happens continuously in your body and which keeps your energy levels high,  happen more effectively when you give wide gaps between meals.

Of course, this meal spacing cannot happen overnight. It comes from a regular yoga practice which then helps you balance your insides so your naturally do not reach for everything around and lead it to your mouth in the mistaken idea that it is healthy!!  A regular (read daily or at least five times a week) yoga sadhana with a strong and sustained pranayama practice ups your energy levels and (your life force, though scientific community may not quite relate to that term:) so that your meal needs are naturally reduced. ...

For many of us genuine yoga-freaks this is a matter of daily experience.

Daily Health Gyan : love hormone and u and pills

Writing a feature on love hormones ( I know, I know, V-day attacks even yoga writers). Read that anti-depressant pills can actually affect the receptor sites of love/reward hormones, contracting your emotions -- meaning you may feel like NOT  loving any more!! Terrible!! Seems out of the frying pan, right into the fire!! Avoid pills guys.. do yoga:)

Ajna chakra: answer and query

ANSWER: Even I have forgotten my own query! This is what happens when readers's response is lukewarm! Nevermind... I am a yoga enthusiast, not a profitmonger. So, lukewarm or not, I continue spiralling in my circle of love for yoga... So will answer the query... Ajna chakra, when it is mismanaged, can cause delusion and illusion (euphemism for being lunatic!). On the physical side, when flowly wrongly, it can cause eye problems, headaches and nightmares!

QUERY: What are the problems of the love center/anahata overflowing?
Everybody wants this center to flow... but what when it overflows... (In certain asanas, u will find people start crying .. wheel, locust have that effect! Yoga nidra can also do that).

Prahlada, Sivananda asana guru, to be in Mumbai this month! Sign up!!

Prahlada, the asana guru and head of the Montreal Sivananda center, will in Mumbai on Feb 24, for a special Yoga session and Satsang. We will fix up a hall in Bandra for the event which will be in the evening of Friday. Time will be fixed, depending on his flight. Please jot the date down on your calender. He is the best asana guru (for me, in the whole world). His energy is electrifying.
All are welcome, including non-Sivananda students. The asana session will be based on the classic Sivananda style. U will need to

•  Bring your own mat.
• Wear comfortable yoga clothes (We will ensure a changing place for u to change, if u are coming from work).
• And sms me your email, name on my 9833109909 number. U can also email me on yogaenthusiast@rediffmail.com .. We will register u in and send u the update on the exact timing, etc.

Be there. This is the only second time in Sivananda tradition that a yoga session/satsang is being organised. Last time, it was at Kandivli, for which we had hired the terrace on our sprawling complex. It was a fantastic gathering and everybody was in a yoga zone:)

Om shantih!!

Goddess Saraswati's vehicle and your breath and wisdom

Above you see disparate images -- seemingly unconnected -- one an image of the Goddess Saraswati (of wisdom and learning) and then the pose hamsasana (swan) pose, and the last one, a translation of a treatise on liberation that is said to be part of the Bhagavata Purana.

The swan is seen as an ideal of the self-realised person (the ideal for real yoga practice and its only raison d'etre for the practice ctually) because it is seen in Indian symbolism as the perfect detached creature -- it is in the water, yet its feathers are not we. It also can walk, fly and swim. The word ham-sa when transposed sounds so-ham -- this is the sound of your own breath, according to yoga. It is the sound that is manifest in the body, psychically experienced by it. It may explain why when people meditate on this sound (which is called the nirguna mantra, or the chant of the formless) they feel as if they have entered a trance state (one contemporary guru uses it as part of his practice and some silly followers actually think he made up the sound. One such follower once sent me a threatening letter when I wrote a yoga column on this sound and its meditation, which btw is called ajapa japa famously in all of yoga and does not belong to any one group, or its leader!!).

So, so-ham and ham-sa mean the realised being -- it is an experience of the ultimate one which even Patanjali says is why nature conjured us up, and gave `a vague nothing a local habitation and a name' (as Shakespeare talks, in Midsummer's Night Dream). So this sound is also the sound of your breath.
That it should be the vehicle of Saraswati means that wisdom rides on your breath (your awareness of it)-- more on this later:)
Interesting thing is that when u do the hamsasana (a preparatory pose to the peacock) your breath stops altogether!!

Bhringi rishi, ardhanareshwar and understanding yoga

        (Image from this site: a temple fresco in Karnataka, India)
I read this story first in Devdutt Pattanaik's 7 secrets of Shiva(Published by Westland) .It is a story of how Rishi Bhringi (he is the shrivelled man, all bones, standing on Shiva's right, his hands folded in respect) would not worship Parvati though Shiva himself made it clear he was incomplete without his wife. Parvati sits on Shiva's lap to show her proximity, but Bhringi turns himself into a bee to try to move between the close-knit couple. Then Shiva shows his Ardhanareshwar form, where he is both man and woman, and as incomplete without Shakti.  But the rishi is still adamant. An annoyed Parvati then curses Bhringi so that he loses all that comes from a mother's body (as the belief goes)  -- which includes tissues and blood (the father is said to be responsible for bones and nerves). So Bhringi is reduced to bones and nerves and cannot even stand. A compassionate Shiva then gives the now-remorseful rishi a third leg on which to stand... Hence Bhringi is shown as the tripod in Shiva's depictions...

For me, this story is very expressive of the idea of yoga as something that will not be complete without accepting the human angle to the divine. Or the physical aspect of the mind. Or vice versa. Or the philosophical and theological in relation to the mundane living... That both are tied... to run after one, without understanding that it is tied to the other... then, u may trip, either way.. arrogant philosophers who are delusional; or bhogis for whom the idea of the spiritual seems cheesy or too mystical...

Yogic thought for the day

When dealing with women who are trying to control their weight, I often find they blame external factors -- the usual target is a vague general thing they club as hormones. However, a lot of control comes from taking responsibility for oneself, including for what is happening inside your body... It is not something I make up, as a smug, know-it-all yoga teacher:) Here is what this book on yoga says -- from the  Yogic management of common diseases by Sw Karmananda (Bihar school):

One of the most prominent precipitating factors in states of thyroid imbalance is long-term suppression and blockage of emotional expression....
Balancing of the emotions, and giving a suitable outlet for their expression is an important part of yoga therapy for thyroid disease.

Daily Health Gyan

Having olives can help u lose belly fat.. a few -- five to six daily will do the trick... try it and let me know:) It has MUFA which helps reduce belly fat...

Yogic tip for today

When trying the crow and if nervous here is a tip: Don't keep moving back and forth from the base position. It is a sign of nervousness and that the body feels it is not ready for the pose. Instead, get strength and confidence by just staying in the base position and moving up from one toe to another. Do not swing the hips back. Stay with the weight on the upper arms (mid arm lock) and shuffle from one toe to another. The body will get used to the weight needed for the pose. Beginners move the hips back, lose the lock at the arms and ruin the chance to gain strength and confidence... if you keep moving the hips back, u may take forever(never) to get the pose...

Yogic thought for the day

Tada drustuh Svarupe avasthanam.. Patanjali in his Samadhi pada..

This line, in essence, is all what yoga is supposed to be:  Then the seer ( abides) in itself.

U can understand why Yoga or Patanjali are perplexing. It is always an experiential thing.. yet, I notice that unlike other sutras of Patanjali where the interpretations can be confusing if you do not practice yoga (and just talk of it as do a lot of stupid people and no, I am not being bitchy, merely objective, who talk down to me, they do, because apparently they are all scholars in Patanjali and flaunt some certificate form some local insti to prove it:) this sutra gets an uniform interpretation by all `real' scholars which shows its meaning is rather clear...

When you practice yoga and feel it in the poses (only when you hold them long or try difficult poses and practices that demand attention and endurance from your mind) then only can u understand this sutra...
Suddenly, there is the awareness of two minds -- one absolutely alert and the other watching. Both are in tandem, without either subverting the other. Then the mind enters a state of pure awareness... that is called the chidakash -- pure consciousness. The practice of yoga is meant to keep you there for long... then, you reach the more advanced level of yoga of involution, focus, meditation and samadhi (there can be no real translation for this word:)..

Here, what he is saying is that the mind abides in itself, and is uncluttered by its afflictions (that includes its thought waves, that shuffle between past, and present). Even in quantum science as one book I read explained, the joker in the pack is Time. So, when you do yoga the sense of time shifts... Past and future blur and there is only a continuum of the now...

This state is yoga....

Why is this pose so tough for us?

This is a warrior pose variation. I just found it while scanning some books. It looks easy first hand. Also, even most of my students can stay in the basic warrior balance (which is so tough) for very long, some people like Petros, Valerie, Sai, Mini, Sonya, Mayank, nowadays Murthy (whose balance has improved so much since the last few months) and a lot of others. That basic balance itself is rather challenging and its perfect execution -- a T-shape with the body -- is rather tough.. Then to hold it for a minute without topping off, is tough. So yes, it is a basic-tough pose I like to teach my students.  Yet this new one, which is just an extension of that, is giving so much trouble to my students. Most of them are unable to lift the back leg off the ground and it hangs timidly towards the floor. The other leg remains bent often. And the wobble factor is rather high:) However, that is the interesting thing about this pose -- though both versions have no hands to guide you or to give a sense of security, in this pose, just the fact that the hands have moved behind (from where it may take a fraction of a second longer to open it, to break a fall) is all that gives so much trouble. Suddenly, you realise that balancing is such a fine art and it becomes a fascinating study in itself.. and how much more the mind can leap, to conquer its fears that are deeply hidden and which we do not even know as fear!! That is what this pose teaches me.. and every pose, is a cleaning up of those things we do not need any more.. then, somewhere between the struggle in the body and mind, the mind becomes even more clean. That is why tough yoga is necessary, for the mind more than anything else. When you hold the pose over the wobble and inner chatter of your mind, including its screams,  then that white noise where everything stops and you touch base with a space you never reached in your own mind...chidakash!! Pure consciousness, perfect awareness, unjudging, complete, watching. .. Then, yoga happens to you:)

What you need in this pose?

• Constant practice of standing balancers, especially warrior and crane/crescent versions.
• A good group to practice in -- it can lift this pose really. .. that is called morphic reasonance... a synchornicity of energy... that still puzzles scientists but which seems to be how nature works...

Happy sadhana!!

Daily Health Gyan

In Reader's Digest: that pregnant women avoid microwaves, hairdryers and vacuum cleaners because they generate magnetic waves -- may cause asthma in the developing baby...